John Lott's Website

2/27/2007

"Cash-Strapped Michigan Sheriff's Department Auctioning Machine Gun"

Given that machine guns are legal and given that there are zero crimes committed with these registered machine guns, this seems like a rational policy to me, but I am sure that this Sheriff's office will be given all sorts of grief.

"Given that machine guns are legal and given that there are zero crimes committed with these registered machine guns,"

There have been two murders committed with lawfully owned MGs. One case was a cop used a Mac 10 to murder an informant. In another, a wealthy doctor killed his assistant whom he'd been stalking with a Mac-10.

UPDATE: Sayuncle was nice enough to inform me that the case involving a police officer did not involve a privately owned machine gun. He pointed to the details are available here.

2/26/2007

Anti-crime advice from a criminal

2/25/2007

Another huge hole in campaign finance laws

So does this mean that the Saudi's are financing Hillary Clinton's campaign? I can't give a candidate $10,000 for their campaign, but I can pay you for a talk and then let you spend the money on yourself. Given all his other ways around the campaign finance laws, I can't wait for Soros to take advantage of this. Of course, he probably figured this out long ago.

Global Warming Hysteria Making it so Children are Losing Sleep

This is great. I hope that Al Gore with his movie and the others exaggerating the risks feel good about themselves. Some years ago, when my oldest kids were around 7 and 5, I noticed that some of the neighborhood children who we had over were not flushing the toilets. When I asked them what was going on (the smell had alerted me to the problem), I was told that they were worried that we were running out of water. It was something that they had been told in school. The notion that we were running out of water in Pennsylvania was just bizarre. I wondered what teachers could possibly scare children that way.

2/24/2007

Washington Post Gets it wrong: "Criticism of hunters who use assault rifles puts writer’s career in jeopardy"

The problem isn't that he made a political mistake, the problem is that this guy doesn't know what he was talking about. These military-style assault rifles are functionally the same as hunting rifles. A .308 caliber AK-47 "assault" weapon fires bullets that are no more powerful and at the same rate as a regular deer hunting rifle. They are both semi-automatic guns. This AK-47 is a civilian version of the weapon. It is not the military version.

The scary power of prosecutors

When I was chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission I came across many prosecutors who scared me. You want people who are really motivated to get their job done, but these guys would frequently feel that everyone commits thousands of crimes and even though we only caught this person for one crime, we are really justified in throwing the book at this person. These guys have so much power. I never meet Giuliani, but he impressed as among the worst in the way that he went after Milken. Charging Milken with a hundred crimes, going after Milken's brother, and going after others to make Milken break, not because he really seemed to believe that these charges were justified. In the end, Milken went to jail for something that had only involved fines in the past. But Milken agreed to this to save his brother from Giuliani trying to destroy Milken's brother's life.

Canada: "No preventing gun rampage"

I have seen this defeatist attitude many times. Of course, they could always consider letting potential victims carry concealed handguns. Then you have many potential targets covered and the criminals doesn't know until he starts who is going to be able to stop him.

Metal detectors and beefed-up evacuation plans couldn't have prevented gun-wielding Kimveer Gill from killing an 18-year-old student and wounding 20 others when he went on a rampage at Dawson College in September, director-general Richard Filion told a safe schools conference yesterday.

Unlike a fire or gas leak, Filion said, school emergency plans and security guards are virtually helpless in the face of an armed assailant bent on carnage.

"We were dealing with an incredibly unpredictable force - an unstable and armed human intent on violence," Filion told 650 school officials at a Toronto conference organized by the Canadian Safe Schools Network.

"We have no idea where that person will go and what they will do. This guy came to the college with 1,500 bullets; he was planning a real massacre." . . . .

2/22/2007

Do they really want to convict this good Samaritan?

I understand how the person whose place was broken into must feel, but would convicting this guy really create the right incentives for neighbors in future cases? Possibly the solution is that the person with the DVD shouldn't have had the volume turned up so high? May be the neighbor can follow the lead in this story I posted on earlier.

Concealed Handgun Permit Rate in Alabama

I am a little baffled by the claim that is supposedly attributed to Gary Kleck that "found that 2.9 percent of adults in states with the most gun-friendly laws had permits." My numbers show a number of states with much highe rates than 2.9 percent. Possibly he means an average rate, but the context of the discussion is in terms of the highest rates. As to my quotes, I did mention that there were some counties in Pennsylvania that actually had permit rates above 20 percent, so Alabama's rate is no where near the top of the range, though they are rural counties.

Some of the details about who had permits were interesting. I particularly like the fact that in Jefferson County 284 were housewives.

Birmingham News (Alabama)

February 18, 2007 Sunday

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A Vol. 119 No. 342

LENGTH: 1808 words

HEADLINE: Metro area loaded with concealed guns Records show more than 1 in 10adults may have carry permits; for many, 'it's an insurance policy'

BYLINE: STAN DIEL News staff writer

BODY:

. . . Still, some of the leading academics who study the issue said Birmingham stands out.

John Lott, a former scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of several books on handguns and crime, said his research has never identified a city with a higher percentage of adults with permits.

''Those are pretty remarkable numbers,'' he said.

Among states for which Lott said he'd collected data, South Dakota has the highest percentage of adults with permits, 7.5 percent. Lott said he'd run across a handful of very rural counties with higher percentages than greater Birmingham, but not a city of any size.

Gary Kleck, a professor in the criminology department at Florida State University, said the most recent significant research he has seen - done for a book published in 2000 - found that 2.9 percent of adults in states with the most gun-friendly laws had permits. That's less than a third of the rate in Birmingham. . . .

2/20/2007

"Apple CEO lambasts teacher unions"

It is pretty gutsy to go before a group of people who purchase your product and say that government protection of their jobs hurts children. Yet, if you had asked me what position Steve Jobs (Democrat) and Michael Dell (Republican) would have taken on school unions, I would have been completely wrong. I would have incorrectly guessed that Jobs supported the unions and Dell was more likely to oppose them. Well, Jobs is exactly right here. I am amazed that he made the statement that he does on teacher unions, and I am equally disappointed with Dell. Jobs is correct that you can not run a business and give customers what they want if you can't get rid of employees are not doing their jobs. Why should children be the ones that have to put up with this service in schools?

When are Global Warming Advocates Going After Your Beef Consumption?

It is obviously only a matter of time until they start to restrict the number of cows in the US. I really wish that these articles would discuss 1) what percent of global warming is due to greenhouse gases (there are other factors such as the sun), 2) what percent of the change in greenhouse gases are manmade, and 3) why exactly this warming is "bad" (after all the UN's recent claim that over the next 100 years ocean levels are only supposed to rise a small 7 to 21 inches) versus all the benefits (more usable land that is currently frozen, higher temperatures improve people's health, increase the growing season, and increase the number of plants and animals).

2/19/2007

ABC's This Week interview with Mitt Romney Regarding Gun Control and Mormonism

I can give Romney an easy explanation for changing his position and not supporting the assault weapons ban: the claims made by proponents about what would happen after the ban sunset in September 2004 didn't happen.

MITT ROMNEY's ABC News interview on Sunday, February 18, 2007

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) Let's talk about guns. You were supportive of the Brady Bill, the handgun waiting period in the past. You sign an assault weapon ban into law, and you said in the past, I don't line up with the NRA. Now you -

MITT ROMNEY (2008 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE)

Well, on that, on that issue.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) Now you're a member of the NRA.

MITT ROMNEY (2008 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE)

Yes. And I - and I know the NRA does not support an assault weapon ban, so I don't line up on that particular issue with the NRA, either does President Bush. He likewise says he supported an assault weapon ban. Today we don't havethe Brady Bill because we have instantaneous background checks, that's no longeran operative or needed measure. But a I'm a strong proponent of second amendmentrights. I believe people under our Constitution have the right to bear arms. We have a gun in one of our homes. It's not owned by me. It's owned by my son but I've always it sort of mine.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) When did you join the NRA?

MITT ROMNEY (2008 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE)

It's about - well, within the last year. And I signed up for lifelong membership. I think they're doing good things. And I believe in supporting the right to bear arms.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) This gets to, I think, the core question. You've had changes on many issues, many different kinds of issues yet they're all -

MITT ROMNEY (2008 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE)

Well not - certainly not that one.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) Well not - well, but joining the NRA. All going in the same direction. How do you combat the charge that these are conversions of convenience?

MITT ROMNEY (2008 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE)

Actually not all going in the same direction. There are other - you know as you get older and you have experience, I ran for office the first time, never having been in politics . . .

I don't include the part of Stephanopoulos' interview where he was constantly going after Romney being a Mormon, but it was pretty amazing how obsessed Stephanopoulos was with Romney's religion. Stephanopoulos and other parts of the mainstream media are bringing this up so much that they must believe that they could use it to weaken Romney, but I really think that this obsessiveness makes the media look bad. I can't believe for 99 percent of conservative Christians that it makes any real difference. After seeing the way the media discusses his religion, I can believe that it makes a difference for liberals.

2/17/2007

Over a Million Page Hits! Thank you

Dear Everyone:

Sometime this past week my blog went over a million page hits. I just wanted to thank you all for taking the time for reading the material that I have put up here. I also want to thank my son, Maxim, who despite going to college, has continued to handle the various problems that have arisen with the blog site over time.

Evidence that Trolley Square Mall in Utah occurred in a "gun free zone"

A photo of one of the signs at Trolley Square is available courtesy of W. Clark Aposhian of the Utah Shooting Sports Council. Click on the picture to get a larger copy of it and see point 10 for the mention that weapons are banned.

N.W. Clayton fills us in on additional information about this shooting. Off-duty police officer Hammond, who stopped the attack, "was at the opposite end and on a different floor of the convoluted Trolley Square complex when the shooting began. By the time he became aware of the shooting and managed to track down and confront Talovic, three minutes had elapsed." It is fortunate that the off-duty officer ignored the posted signs, but the point is that the killer was not stopped from taking his guns into the Mall just because guns were banned there. One wonders how many more lives could have been saved if law-abiding Utah citizens had been able to carry a gun into the Mall and gotten on the scene in less than 3 minutes. I understand that theoretically under state law permit holders could still carry their guns into the Mall despite the posted signs, but there appears to be some confusion and debate about this issue and courts have upheld gun bans in company parking lots.

I got a note from Janlee Tobias noting to me that: "You may also be interested to know that on Monday night's Channel 2 (KUTV) www.kutv.com broadcast, a witness said words to the effect, 'I saw the shooter. I looked for something to throw at him, but all I could find was a stool.' Then the witness saw the off-duty Ogden police officer and directed him to the shooter."

Birmingham, Alabama with the highest rate of Issuing Permits in Urban Areas in the US

Here is a note that I received from a reporter: "Specifically, we've found that 64,000 people in the two most populous counties in the Birmingham metro area have permits. That's a little more than 10 percent of adults."

A useful interview on global warming

Off-duty Officer with Concealed Handgun stops Utah Mall Shooting

I have been arguing this point for years, but here is one reason why police officers should be allowed to carry concealed handguns when they are off-duty. Fortunately, the off-duty officer ignored the "no guns allowed" sign at the Mall. The killer apparently also ignored the sign.

2/12/2007

Valentine Flowers are bad for the Planet?

Many of these flowers are grown in third world countries and the claim it is horrible that the flowers are shipped in the cargo holds of planes that travel to developed countries. By this notion, are we going to ban all foreign trade? This isn't serious. What do these environmentalists what these poor third world countries to do? Wealthier countries care more about the environment than do poorer ones. Just naturally cars and other things are more efficient in wealthier countries over time without any government intervention, so if we do something that makes these third world countries poorer, their environment will deteriorate.

Does Giuliani have a tin ear on guns?

All he really had to say here is that he recognized people's right to defend themselves. His emphasis on hunting in the context of the second amendment will remind a lot of conservatives about Clinton. Of course, possibly it isn't a tin ear. Possibly he means it to get gun owners upset.

Ironically, the procedure seems to have been originally developed in the US and will soon be forthcoming in the journal Tissue Engineering, but seems to be spreading around the world much faster than it is here. Presumably it is due to the regulatory environment in the US. The procedure using a woman's own fat cells seems to be even safer, but these regulatory delays will keep on having women use the artificial implants.

Incentives matter in paternity as with everything else

It is hard to ignore all the competition by men claiming to have been the father of Anna Nicole Smith's child. Apparently men sometimes deny responsibility for being a father of a child when they are not married to the mother. Surely there are a few exceptions. But when has there ever been this number of men (four possibilities have been mentioned to date and possibly there are more to come) who claim to be the father of the same child. Possibly this is due to Anna Nicole being unusually promiscuous, but if she was only worth $500 and not possibly $500 million, would you have a married man and others coming forward claiming that they were her child's father?

Rudy Giuliani's unclear views on gun control?

I have read this a few times, but I am still not completely clear on what gun control regulations he would support. "Reasonable and sensible" gun control regulations could mean that any regulation is possible. The last paragraph is extremely worrisome. There are obviously many important issues in determining who one supports in the election, but this is not the state's rights view that I thought that Giuliani was going to take. That is my biggest concern, not his particular views on gun control.

It is amazing that Ms. Theron doesn't understand the difference between a government banning activity (especially when the government owns everything) and a private TV station firing someone for making a statement. How does she not understand the freedom of the TV station? How does she not understand that the person is free to work for other stations or radio stations?

In any case, as a minor aside, was she referring to the CBS people who were fired for the fake Bush documents? I am not sure of the intellectual leap between firing people for sloppiness/fraud and the government not allowing someone to perform.

Does this Environmental Regulation Endanger Safety?

Changing speed limits along a stretch road raises the probability of accidents. The effect might be small, but people slowing down has some risk. In the past there was some academic research showing that accident rates depend on differential speeds, and these changes in speeds would contribute to that problem. Anyway, it would be interesting to measure how big of an impact this might have.

2/06/2007

Rudy Giuliani on the Courts, Abortion and Judicial Nominations

Well, Giuliani is saying the right things to get conservative Republicans behind him, but the amazing thing is that he is doing it in a way that is completely consistent with his past statements and is likely to make him acceptable to many moderates and even some liberals.

Steve Jobs has a very provacative posting at Apple.com today asking for the elimination of digital rights management (DRM) that is used "to protect its music against theft." The most interesting part of the discussion to me was way Apple doesn't license its FairPlay DRM to others because it would be difficult for Apple to control information about the program and these leaks could be used to disable the protection. He suggests that is part of the reason that Microsoft has moved to the Apple model of having one company control both the hardware and software.

The other issue is ending DRM. Obviously Jobs would support this only if he believes that he has the best online music store and best hardware. Many economists have argued that Apple had locked customers into using iTunes once they had bought an iPod and that then the fact that they bought songs on iTunes would lock them into buying iPods in the future. The numbers that Jobs provides makes it clear that the investment the people make in songs bought by iTunes is so small that it is hard to think that there is much of a lock-in effect. He claims that the average iPod owner only has 3% of their songs from iTunes. The implication that he draws that this DRM hasn't stopped piracy. That last part seems like a big jump in logic to me, at least with the evidence that he has provided. These songs could be from people's legitimate CD collections. I also wonder about how much of this other space is due to podcasts, movies, audio books. It is because I have problems with this last step that I also have problems with his conclusion that the big four record companies would be better off junking DRM. Doing so could greatly increase piracy, which is what the record companies fear. I appears Jobs believes that he would benefit, but all that goes to show is that people aren't being locked into the iPod world. iPod and iTunes are both doing well because they are the best out there, not because people are locked into them.

There is one other possible interpretation to all this. It is possible that Jobs is reacting to recent pressure from multiple European countries to share its DRM. Apple might believe that it is easier for the music companies to defend this and at the same time Apple can make it look like it is in agreement with the Europeans. This interpretation depends on the reasonable assumption that the music companies are willing to fight hard to defend their property rights.

Rudy Guliani on Guns and Other Issues

I was talking to someone whom I shall not name who pointed out to me that Guliani will essentially take a state's rights position. That he supported gun control when he was mayor, but that as president he will leave it to the local governments to decide the rules. In some important sense, this is a very conservative position, and if people are convinced that he will follow this position then from abortion to gun control, conservatives would be very happy with him. Obviously, there will be many issues that this won' work for, such as enforcing many of the laws that are already on the books (take the behavior of the BATFE as just one example or gun tracing).

Update: As someone wrote me this afternoon: "An openly "pro-choice" candidate, for example, who comes out and says that Roe v. Wade is a bogus Supreme Court decision because it violates the 10th Amendment could get the support of many "pro-life" voters. And, even though the 2nd Amendment applies to local, state, and federal governments, an openly anti-gun candidate who says that he'll oppose federal gun-control legislation purely on 10th-Amendment grounds might actually get my vote if I believed that he meant it (which would require quite a bit of persuasion)."

2/04/2007

Cramer's new book: Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie

I have know Clayton for many years, and this should be a really solid, excellent book. It was very difficult for him to convince publishers that there was a market for this type of book, and I hope that the market makes everyone who turned the book down regret that they did so. I just talked with him and one of his results is that 2/3rds of older white males owned guns. That seems like a pretty sizeable percentage of the population, especially given that many of these individuals were too old to use them.

Obviously I am not this reviewer's targeted audience because I find it interesting that women regularly owned guns. As to Clayton's discussion of academia, it seems relevant given that it is part of the story for why he wrote the book.

Utah House Passes Universal Voucher Bill

It is too bad that this passed only after Milton Friedman had died, but it is still quite a testiment to the influence that he had on the nation's public debate. This will have a bigger impact on schooling in big cities. The shame is that competition is still not occurring in the biggest cities in the US with horrible public school systems.

Tierney mentioning benefits from global warming

John Tierney makes a point that I have often thought about. Why is it that environmentalists oppose global warming (OK, for the sake of argument let's assume that man has some significant impact)? There would clearly be more animal life. There would be more plants that would be able to grown and that would provide food for more animals. As the density of animal life increases, won't there also be more new species on net than there would otherwise be? I have also wondered whether there would actually be more usable land area. True, there would be some flooding, but think of all the areas in Siberia and Canada that would be opened up for people to use. Of course, in the past, others have also pointed to the benefits for mankind, better health, etc.. The cost-benefit studies that I have seen appear to do a pretty poor job on taking these different factors into account.

2/03/2007

Weather Forecasting still has a ways to go

Weather forecasters have gone from predicting a very wet, warm winter in Southern California. Instead they have had record a cold and dry winter. Just a thought, but people have a much greater incentive to get the current weather forecast right than a forecast 50 or 100 years from now simply because no one will remember what you said 100 years from now.

Defensive gun use in Columbus, Ohio caught on video tape.

Defensive gun use caught on video tape. This clerk apparently stopped a previous attack that was even much more dramatic where the robbers had ordered customers on the floor at gun point and had been threatening people.

Rita: I think it's a nice story. He comes out, and he looks around. He wrinkles up his little nose. He sees his shadow or he doesn't see it. It's nice. People like it.Phil: You are new, aren't you? People like blood sausage too.

Phil: I'm a god. I'm not *the* God... I don't think. [I liked the back and forth with Rita on this one, especially her reference to her Catholic education.]

John Fund: So much for the Democrats getting rid of earmarks

But the claim of "earmark" purity doesn't stand up to scrutiny. New House rules stipulate that a bill can be said to have "no earmarks" if the committee chairman under whose jurisdiction the bill falls simply declares there are no earmarks in it. As Humpty Dumpty said in "Alice in Wonderland": "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

The "no earmarks" loophole was big enough to allow a convoy of earmarks into the final bill, including $185 million for agricultural research projects and $50 million to build an experimental rain forest in Iowa. "I can give you a list of projects in my district that are gone from the bill, but they're certainly not gone in West Virginia and Nevada," Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole told me yesterday. He didn't have to elaborate that those two states are the homes of Senate appropriations committee chairman Robert Byrd and Majority Leader Harry Reid.

2/01/2007

The "Bogus" Science of Secondhand Smoke

This person must be really hated among medical people, but my guess that he is sufficiently only that he is willing to go against the political correctness on the smoking issue. Look at his background: "former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention, and he received the U.S. Public Health Service Superior Service Award in 1976 for his efforts to define less hazardous cigarettes."

In any case, from an economist's point of view, the entire debate over secondhand smoke is largely besides the point when it comes to these regulations. The question an economist would ask is whether whatever harm from the secondhand smoke in born by the smoker, and the answer is that there is not a problem as long as someone owns the air. In a restaurant or other building someone clearly owns the air and bears the cost of allowing the air to have more smoke in it than their customers desire. Some people may like to smoke with their meals and they will pay to do it and others might want perfectly clean air. Even if you only had one restaurant in town, the restaurant owner has a strong incentive to give the customers who value the type of air the most what they want.

About Me

Name: John Lott

Location: Virginia, United States

Amazed how lucky I am that I have had jobs where I could just think about whatever I wanted to think about.
This summer I will be moving to the University of Maryland. Previously I held positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. I have published over 90 articles in academic journals. I received my Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1984.